STUDENT IS TOPS AT PICKING STOCKS

Collegiate champ doubled his mock portfolio in contest

When it comes to his own money, Daniel McAllister says he’s adverse to risk.

But give him $100,000 of play money and he’ll double it in the stock market, at least in the short term.

McAllister, 28, who graduates this month from the University of San Diego with an MBA degree, beat about 700 other students from 34 colleges and universities across the country in January in a four-month stock-picking contest called the All-America Student Analyst Competition. This was the contest’s first year.

McAllister, previously a financial analyst at San Diego-based Jack in the Box, said he enlisted the help of former co-worker Adam Husein to come up with an algorithm to analyze stock performances up to a month before the competition began in September. The two settled on biotech, pharmaceutical and financial stocks for the short-term game.

“We wanted to look at two sectors — health care and financial — at least perceived as a little bit more risky,” he said. “When you have $100,000 of play money that you’re investing to win a competition, you can take risk.”

McAllister, who majored in finance and international business at the University of Minnesota, said the algorithm picked all of the stocks for them. One particular great call it made was shorting the biotech stock Celsion, which fell 81 percent on one day in January — from $8.02 per share to $1.51 per share when its drug to treat liver tumors failed a key test.

McAllister said the contest didn’t release the value of his portfolio at the end, but he said his calculation shows it about doubled over the four months. The La Mesa resident made one trade per week for the contest. “In this time frame, it worked really well,” said McAllister. “That’s not a guarantee that over the next six months it would work out just as well … it’s not like we solved the market.”

McAllister, who works as a consultant with AXmentor, a privately held technology company, said his prize for winning the competition is simply pride. That, and an interview about his victory last month on CNBC.